In some sense, it doesn't really matter how the Supreme Court rules on the gay marriage case it's hearing today. The culture war is over on this front, and gay marriage has won. Even if it loses at the Supreme Court this term, it will win in the legislatures . . . because it is already winning in popular opinion. Few people much under the age of sixty see a compelling reason that straights should marry and gays should not. For that matter, my Republican grandfather is rumored to have said, at the age of 86, "I think gays should marry! We'll see how much they like it, though."
At this point, it's just a matter of time. In some sense, the sexual revolution is over . . . and the forces of bourgeois repression have won.The whole thing is so dizzying in its stupidity that it defies analysis, but basically: When gays can get married, then getting married will be so much the norm that you stupid bohemians with your free love will be ostracized like cigarette smokers. And leading the way will be those nice young Republican Presidential candidates:
The 1970s were an open revolt against the idea of the dutiful pair bond, in favor of a life of perpetual infatuation. The elites led the way--and now they're leading it back. Compare Newt Gingrich or John McCain to the new generation of Republican hopefuls. Jindal, Ryan, Christie, Rubio . . . all of them are married to their first wives. Jindal met his wife in high school, Christie in college. By their age, McCain was preparing for his first divorce, and Gingrich was just a few years from his second.I'm surprised she didn't mention the irony that these GOP worthies whose shining monogamy will triumph in the new age of gay-marriage-enabled neo-Victorianism are all against gay marriage.
McArdle also returns to that marriage-will-make-you-rich nonsense she was pimping last week, citing it among the forces that will make sexual hedonism de trop. Of course she would think that -- she's one of those people who actually watch Ross Douthat measure marriage with a slide rule to determine the optimal connubial age in a healthy society, and not only finds it fascinating instead of ridiculous, but thinks it will change the way normal Americans behave. Yes, forget culture, forget the economy, forget the environment, forget the forces with which we interact every day -- once the big-brains emerge from their labs with their new, this-time-for-sure convincing evidence we should all get hitched and commence procreating at age 22.73, everyone will get with the program.
Try to imagine being so anxious, not just to be right, but to prove your enemies wrong. Think of what wonderful things McArdle could have achieved with her obviously bountiful imagination if she hadn't been compelled to waste it all on that.
UPDATE. Comments are as always a joy, but I must single out aimai for the term she has invented for McArdle's habit, when troubled by progressive advances, of weaving dark tales of unintended consequences yet-to-come: "weaponized sour grapes."
Okay, I have a lot to say, and I probably shouldn't flood the comments with my ranting until I get my head together. So I'll just point out that, based on the last paragraph:
ReplyDeleteOf course, predictions are hard, especially about the future.
...The Amazing Criswell is alive and writing for the Daily Beast.
I just feel bad for all those gay people who will "fail to marry."
ReplyDeleteBut that's the point of her very stupid column. She thinks that legalization of gay marriage will end the sexual revolution (which actually ended three decades ago with the rise of the AIDS crisis, but there I go with my pedantic obsession with facts again) and everyone - gay and straight alike - will be forced by society to get married and move to the suburbs. Her whole argument is that marriage rights are inevitable and will end sexytime for everyone.
ReplyDeleteThis is like second-level wrongness on her part. Not only does she apparently take seriously the propaganda that liberals are degenerates who fuck like animals and hate the very concept of marriage, but she's actually using that argument in her usual 'not so clever now, are ya?' style, as if we'll suddenly remember and slink away. It's wrongness squared.
ReplyDeleteshe's one of those people who actually watch Ross Douthat measure marriage with a slide rule to determine the optimal connubial age in a healthy society
ReplyDeleteHey, at least it's the scientific method. Well, at least until they don't like the results and start making shit up. Like their wedding "vows".
For that matter, my Republican grandfather is rumored to have said, at the age of 86, "I think gays should marry! We'll see how much they like it, though."
ReplyDeleteMcMegan can't even confirm a quote from her immediate family. You can see the kind of journalistic powerhouse we're dealing with here.
If her grandfather were a black man on a DC metro bus, you could take it to the bank.
ReplyDeleteThe elites led the way--and now they're leading it back.
ReplyDeletejesus CHRIST
Well, it's especially difficult when you take into account the fact that future events such as these will affect you in the future.
ReplyDeleteIs McMegan's vocal advocacy for the Junior Anti-Sex League a new development? I don't recall her being one of those pinch-nosed scolds - she always seemed to be trying to project herself as vivacious/fun/always up for a good time. If so, it's a well-worn track - former party-hearty types who become moralizing finger-waggers once their sexytime is over (see Malcolm Muggeridge).
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't this the quintessential 1950's attitude? "Hur hur, they want to get married, they'll find out, wait till the mother-in-law arrives..." -- it's like a bad Henny Youngman routine.
ReplyDeleteMcMegan "thinks," Shit, it appears that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward fabulous, so because my side is a loser on this issue, now I gotta come up with some way to piss on my victorious enemies, only in a non-golden-showery way.
ReplyDeleteHer whole argument is that marriage rights are inevitable and will end sexytime for everyone.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right about this and definitely the AIDS crisis. I was just referencing her previous column, where she advocated shaming singles who "fail to marry," since I'm still marveling at the obnoxiousness of that, and imagining Victorian glibertarian Megan scolding all the gay singles she meets. She does a little of that preemptively here, but as you say, she's even more excited about ending sexytime for everybody. (Would it be irresponsible to speculate about the McArdle-Suderman marriage? It would irresponsible not to! On the other hand: Eeeehhwwww.)
Workin' on a Sex Farm ... Pokin' your hay ... It's all livestock motifs with these fokes.
ReplyDelete"As that average age rises, you get two unwanted
ReplyDeletephenomenon on the tails of the distribution..."
Jesus, Mary and her legally recognized wife in certain states! Did they fire the copyeditors when they shut down the print edition?
Well, you can't get people to edit copy in exchange for exposure, so...
ReplyDeleteI've always hated this kind of article with the "people are getting married later, DOOMSDAY IS NIGH" bit. But ever since my fiancee left me, I've been a bit less bemused by articles that insist that I've chosen to be single because I'm selfish and short-sighted.
ReplyDeleteBut what really amazes me is just how cynical these people are about marriage - and really, relationships in general. It's not a lifetime commitment between two people who love each other; it's a policy position, to be manipulated to keep society on the right path. It actually fits nicely with their dispassionate, mechanistic views on sexuality. This isn't really McArdle's MO, but then again cynicism is nothing new for her - this is the woman who said that she'd rather receive cash for Christmas than run the risk that her friends won't buy her exactly what she wants.
But McArdle can't be as cynical as she acts. She got married in her late 30's, which suggests that she married out of love rather than necessity or pressure. And why is that a bad thing, again? Yes, once upon a time most people married the boy or girl who lived nearest to them. It wasn't in the cards for me - my beloved was born on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I was ready to jump through a lot of hoops to bring her over here, until she was pressured by her friends and family into turning me down. So what now, Megan? Am I supposed to just grab some random woman and marry her so that I can live up to your hypocritical standards of social rightness? Fuck you.
Sorry if this was incoherent, but it would have been a lot worse if I wrote it two hours ago.
Sorry.
ReplyDeleteHmm. IIRC, MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMegan is just forty years old, and if my math is approximately right (look, ma, no calculator!), that means she was born around 1973. The Summer of Love was 1967, the hippie was declared dead in 1968 and, by the time of her undoubtedly difficult parturition, Woodstock was already in the can, as was Altamont, and most everyone had headed for the funhouse exits (in order to be home to watch the Watergate hearings). My gawd, by the time she was four years old, disco was in full swing.
ReplyDeleteSo, paaaardon meeee, but, what the fuck does she know about it? And how, exactly, is being unmarried in the `70s (when most of those former hippies were in their twenties) instantly transformed into "a life of perpetual infatuation?" She herself, I note, did not marry until approximately the age of thirty-seven. (And, I further note, the mere presence of the definition of marriage as "dutiful pair bond" suggests that Mr. Suderman's midlife crisis is going to be, umm, more dramatic than that of most other men.)
Good gawd, but the woman is thick. At the height of the flaming hedonism she imagines, the big news on the politicosexual front was that Rockefeller wanted to run for President after divorcing his wife! And Wilbur Mills had to go into rehab after Fanne Foxe's swim in the Tidal Basin.
This idjit has some very strange notions of what constituted the sexual revolution, and also seems to be chortling over its presumed demise, especially with that " Jindal, Ryan, Christie, Rubio . . . all of them are married to their first wives" crack (well, so what? So's Jimmy Carter). These creeps are the new "elite?" And, maybe she needs some reminders about sexual demographics. Christie is the old man of the bunch at fifty. Paul Ryan is forty-three. Rubio is forty-one. PBJ is forty-one.
Mark Sanford hiked his way into oblivion at age forty-nine. John Ensign was fifty-three when he grenaded his marriage and his career. Chip Pickering turned his life into a soap opera at age forty-one. Larry Craig was sixty-two when he went toe-tapping. David Vitter was forty-six at the time of his diaper dalliances. Don Sherwood was sixty-four when he hit the police blotter for choking his mistress. And that's just the Republican highlights, not the lowlifes.
But, c'mon. Jindal, India's Alfred E. Neuman, noted exorcist and volcanologist, is a national joke. Ryan has hitched his star to one submarine already. Christie will be in intensive care before he'll ever be in the White House and poor sad-sack Rubio, with a history of shady dealings in the Florida legislature, has better chances of winding up in jail than in the Oval Office. Besides, Ted Cruz has already been making serious pitches to the Bircher/bugnuts/birther/bogdwelling wing of the party as the go-to psychiatrically-suspect Latino.
The fact that they haven't yet ditched their wives/fucked their poodles/sold their children into slavery/been caught with a pair of hookers, a bowling ball and an alligator doesn't mean they're "elites," nor does it mean that the sexual revolution was ever what MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMeMegan imagined it to be.
Phenomenons? Phenomena? Plurals are hard so let's ignore them completely.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering whatever happened to "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong". She got married, kept her maiden name and precedes it by Mrs. Know wonder she's confused.
ReplyDeleteThe sexual revolution ended 30 years ago? What are all those young people fucking like bunnies doing then?
ReplyDeleteIf it's permitted, it must be compulsory! Isn't that how things work?
ReplyDeleteTry to imagine being so anxious, not just to be right, but to prove your enemies wrong.
ReplyDeleteMcArgle has "bragged," probably on numerous occasions, about how hyper-competitive her family was at home growing up. It could be sad how unaware she is of the happy life she missed out on by being conditioned to be so antagonistic and insecure, but the condition is so repulsive to normals, that I can't really be sympathetic when there are actual abused and neglected people all around us whom McArgle doesn't give a shit about.
I'm so, so, sorry. This is a very painful thing. I want to tell you, though, that mr aimai broke up with his college girlfriend after five years or so, opened the newspaper, read my ad in the personals, and we've been together 22 years. If it is meant to be with this woman it will be. she will grow through this experience--maybe she has to go through this experience to have the confidence and courage to leave her country, family, culture behind. If not her there will be someone for you. Best indicator of being with someone is being able to love. I have faith in you.
ReplyDeleteI would leave a spouse on the Appalachian trail to join this comment in polymorphous perversity for ever.
ReplyDeleteThat's the secret to Megan's code. If social change is (ahem) thrust upon you lie back and think of the sufferings of other people when they get what they want but find themselves as miserable as you are. It's weaponized sour grapes
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I saw this coming.
ReplyDeleteYesterday on "The Cycle" Sippy Cupp alerted me as to where this debate was going and where wingnuts are going to position themselves. And in the end this is actually kind of a win for them, because even though it takes away their "homos are disgusting perverts" argument, it now gives them the "unmarried people are all liberal orgy enthusiasts" argument, and they're pretty happy about that.
Such a huge part of the wingnut psyche is made up of the desire to be different from or better than people they perceive as liberal. And according to them, liberals don't marry in favor of attending furry conventions. So while they may not be better than that nice, nattily-dressed married couple antique shopping, they're still better than those gross unmarried people--NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH! SUCK IT, LIBS!!!!!
What up, Crizzzzz!
ReplyDelete"Weaponized sour grapes" is so, so perfect.
ReplyDeleteThere is something about someone who has been hitched long enough for the bloom to come off the rose and who insists that everyone should join them in married miserybliss, isn't there?
ReplyDeleteThis, of course, is the person who fancies herself an economist of sufficient rank to take on Krugman.
ReplyDeleteTurned to darned bestiality, removing the "like" and just started fucking bunnies?
ReplyDeleteWhat's knocking me over with a feather is that Mark "These Hiking Boots Were Made For Walking" Sanford may just be on the verge of a comeback, since he seems to be leading the Pug field in the S.C. congressional special election race. Does that make him an "Elite"?
ReplyDeleteNah, she just grew up (or rather IN) For better Or For Worse. Which also explains why she's only unintentionally funny.
ReplyDeleteYou keeled my brain with McArdle thought goo this morning. That was not very nice.
ReplyDeleteIs there any other kind?
ReplyDeleteMaybe because they don't want to hear from her?
ReplyDeleteI find McArdle to be more of a child that believes only in fairy tales than an adult that handles reality.
ReplyDeleteJindal, Ryan, Christie, Rubio . . . all of them are married to their first wives. Jindal met his wife in high school, Christie in college.
ReplyDeleteElites? Elites?? FYI, the Wasilia Grifter is (so far) still married to her first spouse.
Minarchist or monarchist?
ReplyDeleteShe's an authoritarian. Always has been. Any tool is a good tool for keeping the lower orders in their place.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed it's a standard defense for right-wing gay marriage supporters—make it sound as much like they're kidding as possible.
ReplyDeleteBut remember, he's discovered empathy for people who go through sexual scandals, so he's a much better person.
ReplyDeleteHeh, yeah, the reason I'm not married yet is because I like to dress up like Tigger and yiff most of the afternoon away. Because it would be unthinkable that, hey. I just haven't found someone I'd like to marry. (except for the one I DID... and oh, the weird barroom floor heartache).
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear your engagement ran into a bridge abutment. I've participated in a couple ugly and depressing relationship catastrophes myself, and about the only advice I can give is that you'll get over it. Eventually.
ReplyDeleteMcArdle doesn't give two shits about marriage, as can be demonstrated by the ~20 years she was eligible but unmarried. What she cares about is scoring points off the "left", or whatever group she thinks the Kochs are irritated with. She's a courtier of the hard-right .01%: Goldman-Sachs and BP's very own Grima Wormtongue.
The 1970s were an open revolt against the idea of the dutiful pair bond, in favor of a life of perpetual infatuation. The elites led the way--and now they're leading it back. Compare Newt Gingrich or John McCain to the new generation of Republican hopefuls.
ReplyDeleteDear Lord, leaving alone the sort of hothouse one must occupy in order to imagine Newton Leroy Gingrich and John "Bombs Away" McCain as '70s social icons, neither man held a national office until the 1980s. McCain had some hard-earned national fame beforehand, but in order to've even heard of Gingrich you had to be an obsessive fan of Southern neo-hate speech. Gingrich wasn't divorced the first time until a couple years after he was elected. McCain was divorced before his first House run, but he was a War Hero.
Divorce rates skyrocketed in the 50s, a little fact which always gives social moralists of McArdle-Galt's ilk fits (the ones who can be bothered with facts, I mean). Meanwhile, if you wanna know who made divorce palpable among elite pols it was...Betty Ford. The first and still only divorced President, of course, was the noted counterculturalist Ronald Reagan.
Conversely, there was a pundit a few years ago who was looking at the end of her marriage. Her brilliant, entirely rational conclusion was that therefore successful lifelong marriage is impossible.
ReplyDeleteliberals are degenerates who fuck like animals and hate the very concept of marriage
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't noticed, because conservatism consists of despising anything a liberal might like, they cannot conceive of any other kind of thought pattern. So when they try to suss out what a "liberal" thinks about marriage, the process goes like so:
1. Conservatives support marriage, therefore;
2. Liberals hate the very concept of marriage.
You see the same thing going on with any other issue. Conservatives hate taxes, therefore liberals love taxes for their own sake. Conservatives hate regulations, so liberals want to do nothing but regulate. and so on.
And unmarried teen pregnancies would have been as high in the 1950s as in the 1980s, except that shotgun marriages were more common.
ReplyDeleteMcMeeeMeeeee is a 40 year old teenager whose nativity pillow might have well been located at home plate at Yankee Stadium will forever regale to anyone who will listen or can't get away (stuck in an elevator, didn't see her first, etc...) with tales surrounding that blooper to right field that she turned into an in the park home run.
ReplyDeleteI think a better scribe than I should write the script for a movie called "When Dunning met Kruger" based on the life and "Musings" of McArdle.
...
Just look at the phrase "the dutiful pair bond".
ReplyDeleteStare at its majesty of proof that who wrote it is unmoored from all reality.
And abrupt visits to "relatives" that lasted for exactly six months.
ReplyDeleteProtip for right-wing pundits: when all else fails, rail against 40-year-old mimeographed lefty manifestos....
ReplyDelete"McArcle doesn't give two shits about marriage?" I beg to differ. I am betting heavily that she moped around for years between 15 and 39 or whenever McSuitableBoyMan rode in on his pony because marriage to a glamorous, high status or wealthy male was the sine qua non of success for someone like McCardle whose own career wasn't meeting her aspirations. I'm pretty sure she rocketed back and forth between imagining how cool it would be to be "Mrs. Famous Writer's Second Trophy Wife with International Friends" to "Mrs. Famous and Wealthy dot com guy's wife with trophy career writing about her five gorgeous offspring...." (in other words: America's worst mother).
ReplyDeleteMcSuderman is the second best, uperannuated child prodigy, tool of the upper class rather than upper class himself, marriage of last resort that signifies that she was long past her sell by date.
I'm still cracking up at the incredible moral and mental blindness in his self description "There but for the grace of god go I." But you did, Oscar, you did go there.
ReplyDeleteThank you. IT came on me in a flash and I really think it may be the key to so many Megan columns. Alas that its a key to a conundrum no one really wants to solve.
ReplyDeleteIn some sense, it doesn't really matter how the Supreme Court rules on the gay marriage case it's hearing today.
ReplyDeleteand i'm sure edie windsor would be happy to know that it doesn't matter how the supreme court rules on doma, since apparently culture has nothing to do with economics or politics and how people have to live their actual, non-pink himalyan salt sucking lives.
such a fucking tool.
Do they not get that "time is what turns kittens into cats?" If god gave me the chance to have sport sex from 18-35 and then get married in my allotted time don't you think I'd do it? I'm a nattilly dressed antique shopper who also votes a straight liberal ticket and has gay abortions twice on sunday just because I can. Getting married didn't transform me into a member of the one percent and nor did it conservatize me.
ReplyDeleteThis is like their perennial belief that Hispanic Catholics are a "natural" Republican constituency or that African American homophobia ought to trump GOP racism and will eventually turn every AA into a closet Republican supporter. In fact they've been hanging onto a misunderstanding of the statistical correlation between married women and conservativism--married white women are more likely to be Republican than unmarried women--and they really believe, deep down, that something about being married turns you conservative rather than that the same groups who were getting married in the first place were hanging on to a lot of traditional authoritarian beliefs.
What it comes down to is that they ought to grasp that if they lose the rising generation of younger white women and white men, as well as the non whites, its all over whether they pretend to be the party of married successful people or not. People just don't age into conservativism anymore, if they ever did.
Shaming singles that "fail to marry"? That's just the cherry on top of the shit sundae of unlooked-for celibacy that people who are unlucky at love need. I turn 40 this year in December and I will get married (for the first time) in May. I'm pretty sure the two decades or so the Moral Scolds of America say I should have already been married would not have been any easier if the the chorus of "find a nice girl and settle down" messages had been even louder.
ReplyDeleteBut divorce followed by a (theoretically, public) steady marriage occupies the same moral position that public observance of church always had for the Kristol and Decter and Gertrude Himmelfarb style moral scolds. Its totally ok to have a divorce or two under your belt, or even a dead girl/live boy in the closet so long as you pay lip service to a life style you can browbeat the poors with.
ReplyDeleteI like to imagine McCardle handing out the "get married now" equivalent of the White Feather at sports events, restaurants, and genteel musicales. Or maybe that would be in taxis and buses.
ReplyDeleteWorkin' on a sex farm
ReplyDeletepokin your hay
Is this iambic pentameter? Because it makes a really catchy song lyric.
These guys wake up every day praying that the Churchill quote "If you're not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain" was right, and dreading that it's going to be proven not just wrong, but bullshit. And their last shred of hope, if the SCOTUS oral arguments are any indication, seems to be endless variations on "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!?!?" If these slugs really cared for children, they'd be advocating the banning of divorce, and criminalizing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and giving children up for adoption. If you think Megan is insufferable now, wait till she gets pregnant.
ReplyDeleteSandra Tsing Loh, am I right?
ReplyDeleteOr Larry Kudlow's recent show where he was talking about how Stanford, home of the Hoover Institute and nursery of countless startups, somehow "hates capitalism".
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because they stopped offering a course on the "moral foundations of capitalism" that has only been offered since 2008 (presumably as a response to the anti-capitalist sentiment after the banking crash.) Yes, one of the books on the syllabus was Atlas Shrugged.
And of course one of the panelists was David Horowitz.
Surely the form goes back at least to H.L. Mencken:
ReplyDelete"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
Don't forget the dread scourge of "mononucleosis", a disease that required its sufferers to stay home and isolated from all outside contact for five or six months but that only seemed to strike teenagers from well-to-do families....
ReplyDeleteTeenage girls and young women, that is.
ReplyDeleteNext week, McMegan writes in favor of morganatic marriage.
ReplyDelete"You've *got* to get married; marry down if you must, but for God's sake, if you *have* to marry down don't let them walk off with the family estate. "
If you think Megan is insufferable now, wait till she gets pregnant.
ReplyDeleteI will quit the Internet for the duration. I'm not fucking kidding.
What I REALLY don't get is her, and people like her, (of any gender, because ewwwboy could we talk of Instantstupid and many others) who have everything they ever wanted, complaining that it just ain't enough wiithouth having a pay-per-view window into the suffering of others.
ReplyDeleteHow do I perfom a standing ovation in a comment section?
ReplyDeleteStanford hates capitalism so much that all the students are russkies with names like Sergey and Larry.
ReplyDeleteWell, mononucleosis is a thing, actually (Epstein-Barr virus). Lots of people get it in their teens and twenties, because it's the sort of pathogen that lurks everywhere and waits for you to get a compromised immune system -- which a lot of people do in late high school and early college, due to too much studying/partying and not enough sleeping or eating properly. A bad case will actually put you on your back for four months, because it fucks up your liver and your spleen. I had it in 2001, and I guarantee you I wasn't a pregnant, well-to-do teenager.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1950s, according to my mother (who had it in the 1950s), they called it "glandular fever," anyway.
Yep! Right here. I haven't looked at this for a while, and this phrase jumped out at me: "I sense you picking up the first stone to hurl..." Because, really, haven't we all proposed throwing the entire institution in the compost bin after being caught cheating?
ReplyDeleteThe mountains wll be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth. Horace
ReplyDeleteThey don't have everything they ever wanted. They have many things they were told they wanted but they feel afraid that if other people get it it won't be satisfying--Megan has more or less made that explicit in her fantasy writings about houses, children, and food. Her enjoyment of things is contingent on the belief tht other people, less deserving than herself, are not enjoying the exact same things. Its what makes her pink salt fetish so funny, as people have pointed out over and over again--its not an exclusive pleasure when you can buy it at TJmaxx.
ReplyDeleteIn fact I'm betting you could rewrite her entire column on how gay marriage supporters won't really enjoy it when they get there by substituting the words phink salt and you will porduce a perfect megan column about how useless it is for the lower orders to try to ape their betters' taste.
Her motto When you get there...it won't have been worth the trip."
Just imagine if Peter Suderman had had a real choice.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, this latest drivel from McArglebargle reminded me of the Republican Party convention that was held in New York City not that long ago, during which attendence levels at all the local strip clubs, massage parlors, et al went through the roof. I'm sure if Megan tries hard enough, she can spin that into some kind of devastating moral victory of right-thinking people over the wicked lib'ruls somehow.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that the whole point of this post for MegMac is trying the tactic of preemptively declaring victory for the other side and hoping that they go home, plus taunting them that now they're going to be pressured to become squares and give up that hot hot bar back-room groping. I've always suspected that there was a true conservajerk lurking under that glibertarian facade, and this argument, as weaksauce as it is, is just such a rear-guard action. For those of us in the reality-based community, it's worth remembering that there's still an awfully long way to go and support doesn't equal legislation. (And, of course, who to blame for the current state of affairs re: state constitutional amendments banning SSM.)
ReplyDeleteWonkette and Vice have a lot of fun watching the metrics on gay hookup services like gindr and craigslist skyrocket every time there's a Republican or conservative gathering
ReplyDeleteOf course it won't be worth the trip... you'd have to listen to MCMegans commentary-
ReplyDeletewhoop, about to slip down
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the well worn track is more that currently moralizing folks pretend to have been party hearty types. When their sexy times are over, they do become puritanical finger waggers, but they never were really party animals in the first place.
ReplyDeleteLike born again Christian televangelicals claiming to have been all about the "wine, women and song" on several continents (Robertson? Falwell? I can't be arsed to google it) before they were "saved," when the reality was that they were always dorks who couldn't hold their liquor, couldn't get a girl, and were never further from home than the county seat. Not that they were paragons of virtue either, even by their own latter standards. They were simply mediocre. Not running in the cool circles, so their psycho tropic agents were always last year's, or last decade's, model. Not celibate, especially if self and purchased love "counts," and certainly not be choice, just not popular with the ladies. Not in the forefront of anything, even fashion or consumer trends, but always trying to be. Wannabe cool guys and players, who failed, and then tried to make a gig, and a virtue, out of that rather than what they pretend to be, ie successful cool guys or players who then repented.
Megan here may project herself as having been vivacious/fun/always up for a good time, but I bet the truth is that she was always a drag. Scared of the new drug. Scared to go "all the way" until it became ridiculous not to. Scared of any new experience, idea, sensation, fashion, trend, music, etc. She didn't live the life of a nun for all of those thirty nine years, but she was hardly on the cutting edge of cool Manhattan either.
That's the one.
ReplyDeleteMcMegan on a bus? In your dreams, Fleischman.
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to fight me off first, cookie.
ReplyDeleteWait, you mean it was a different Tigger that proposed to me?
ReplyDeleteI know. As usual, one q. is, Does she really believe this shite? I'm open to either answer: Yes, because you can't consistently write this kind of drivel without the emotional commitment of belief. Or no, because she's merely a propagandist, grinding out the next nyah-nyah attack on her masters' (real, imagined) enemies in her endless quest for wingnut welfare and dinner invites from "the elite."
ReplyDeleteI love the concept of the prudehammer.
ReplyDeleteWell, buddy, you're sexy n' snazzy as all get out...But I've never actually donned a fur-suit. Not even furtively.
ReplyDeleteNow, a PROPOSAL on the other hand...
ReplyDeletePeople like McCardle who use the term "sexual revolution" to refer to just the idea of fucking a lot, without reference to other things that came along with it, like the idea that women might have a right to join in the decision about who and how, are not my favorite people.
ReplyDeletePerfect description and George W. Bush was exhibit A. His big fuck up from his useless, drunken days was that he had a shouting match with his dad.
ReplyDeleteYou're forgetting the hedonism! Plenty of room for everybody.
ReplyDeleteBy "there" he means they suffered consequences, not that they had affairs.
ReplyDeleteWe hate Saddam Hussein, therefore liberals love him. (Objectively, according to some observers.)
ReplyDeleteIt is a song lyric, in a parallel universe Rockumentary.
ReplyDeleteThat's not really happening. No one younger than Boomers has ever actually had sex.
ReplyDeletePfft! I'll stake my predictions about the past against anyones, anyday!
ReplyDeleteYou're very kind. I'd like to think it's the perfect complement to an arsenal containing weaponized sour grapes.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry but the idea of McMegan as a Trophy Wife has given me a bad case of the giggles.
ReplyDelete"Okay, hon, now put on these librarian glasses and the long Victorian dress, and I'll introduce you to ... the prudehammer."
ReplyDeleteI actually like Sandra Tsingh Loh, but IIRC, the reason her marriage fell apart was that she cheated.
ReplyDeleteI'll always love ya, baby.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a lifetime commitment between two people who love each other;
ReplyDeleteit's a policy position, to be manipulated to keep society on the right
path.
As reported in a Lawyers, Guns, and Money comment thread, this was actually on display in SCOTUS oral arguments over Proposition 8. The anti-8 side defined marriage as something that could be wrapped up with liberty, spirituality, and identity. The pro-8 side defined marriage as the government's way to regulate procreation. Yet it's the latter that's supposedly defending the institution.
Mono is absolutely a "thing" but it had it's use as a "thing of convenience" back in the day as well.
ReplyDeleteAnecdotes are not evidence, however almost everyone I know married later in life (late 20s early 30s even 40s) partly because they were making their careers. It wasn't that they were postponing marriage in order to have wild uncommitted sex, it was that they were focusing on their careers singlemindedly. Once they achieved some security or stability, suddenly marriage became more of a possibility. This includes myself and my spouse. If I think about where I'd be or what I'd be if I'd instead gotten married straight out of high school or college, I can't imagine that my life would be as enriched as it is - or that I would have the earning power that I do. The fact that I spent my 20s and early 30s uncommitted made it possible for me to make interesting and risky career choices, which gave me experiences and developed skills I could never have achieved had I been tied down to a house in the suburbs with kids and a spouse's job to consider. And, yeah, when I finally did decide to prioritize my kid and my spouse's career, the fact that I had achieved what I did while single made it possible for me to be more flexible and employable.
ReplyDeleteSo although I have nothing against people who decide to marry young, I have to say I don't see the down-side of waiting.
Workin' at the carwash, earworm, yeah!
ReplyDeleteAnd in the end this is actually kind of a win for them, because even
ReplyDeletethough it takes away their "homos are disgusting perverts" argument, it
now gives them the "unmarried people are all liberal orgy enthusiasts"
argument, and they're pretty happy about that.
I'm happy about it, too. Because this new line seems to be, "As changing law and cultural norms make same-sex marriage just another part of the boring status quo, hedonism-loving liberals will discover to their dismay that the conservatives who spent decades shrieking about how equal rights for gays would destroy civilization were right all along." And I find an argument that utterly goddamn stupid to be hilarious.
Well, unless you're John Kerry. Then his treatment of his first wife was grounds for feverish speculation, and look at what an elitist moneybags he is.
ReplyDeleteYeah, at least conservatives treat sin and vice as appropriately sinful and, uh, vicey. Liberals want to spoil conservatives' fun by making their shameful kinks not-so-shameful.
ReplyDeleteAnecdotes are not evidence
ReplyDeleteOh, look, another liberal moonbat.
Back in 2006 when Bush was president and the Republicans were in charge and the pressure wasn't on to be a reactionary on this issue, McMegan wrote a piece defending the the rights of gays to marry as the correct libertarian position. Yeah, you heard that right.
ReplyDeleteBut since we don't live in Libertopia, we're left with a purely civil legal privilege available to one set of people, but not to another set simply because that civil legal privilege arose from a religious ceremony. (at least, within our cultural heritage; among others, it had little to do with religion) If those who object to gay marriage on religious grounds would be consistent, then let them also reject the civil privileges of marriage not contained in the Bible. Until such a time as we could clearly distinguish the two in legal terms, the civil legal privileges of marriage should be extended to everybody.
Nice, right? People of the same sex should be able to marry, she says. Then all of a sudden the Republican congress is tossed out on its ass, the economy collapses due to their malfeasance, and a Democrat is elected president, and voila! Suddenly in her mind the consequences of allowing gays to marry might be the destruction of society itself!
For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution. We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart.
You gotta say one thing for her, she's consistently an opportunistic weasel if not consistent in her views.
And Herbert.
ReplyDeleteMegan McCardle has one genuinely held belief, and that's in the moral superiority of wealthy people. She probably doesn't actually care about gay marriage or the sexual revolution one way or another, but that total lack of conviction leaves her free to cheerlead for whatever the official Team Republican party line is on the issue.
ReplyDeleteThe single most Meganesque line in that quote is "For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an importnt feture of the institution." That is blatantly false.
ReplyDeleteThe Meganesque part is that she uses the phrase "For some reason..." as though her failure to actually know, to actually enquire, is laudable and necessary. No Megan:
a) Marriage is not always between one man and one woman. b) that is not, in fact, the most important feature of the institution. Property is the single most important feature of the institution of marriage. Following along after that are death rituals for the ancestors and the apportionment of children among family lineages (which is the same as the property issue, see above.)
Women have married bel trees (in Nepal), men have married posthumous dead people (in China), women have taken men as their "wives" and reversed the natural hierarchy of the institution, gay or intersexed beings have married in Native American culture. Somewhere someone has done something at least once and society has survived.
I hate this woman. All kidding aside. She's an offense against Brain Cells, as well as everything else.
Mononucleosis absolutely existed (both my parents managed to come down with it, early in their marriage, and it sounded like the least fun thing on earth), it just always struck me as being unusually concentrated in the teenaged female offspring of the upper middle class.
ReplyDelete"Exhaustion", "dehydration", and "flu-like symptoms" are real things, too, even if their prevalence among hard-living celebrities and pop stars and athletes makes peoples' eyebrows raise up. Similarly, there were an awful lot of unmarried men in their twenties and thirties who dropped dead on "pneumonia" in the mid-late 1980s.
I was just thinking about this today, in the context of this thread, since Bill O'Reilly of loofah fame seems to be coming down on the "oh what the hell, let 'em get married, I'll have the wild non marital sex if they don't want it." I think he's going to be really, really, really, pissed off when he finally heads to the glory holes of his long dreamed for kink and discovers that he is still just a creaky, creepy, pallid old white guy that no one wants to screw.
ReplyDeleteShe got the trophy for looking like an enormous elf.
ReplyDeleteI want McMegan to debate her 'gay marriage will kill the sexual revolution' idea against the 'sexual revolution turned all the priests in gay pedophiles' caucus, but only on the condition that I don't have to watch.
ReplyDeleteI LoL'd.
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World's Biggest Indoor Rodeo, IYKWIM.
ReplyDeleteThis seems less like careerism and more of her natural development into a full-fledged moralizing scold now that, conveniently, her funtime party years are entirely behind her. Since sexual liberation has nothing left to offer her and she's happily married (well, for certain values of "happy"), it's now time to turn on all those people out there who are having the good times that she's no longer able to.
ReplyDeleteAnd from a family of intimidating academic intellectuals, of course, when she apparently can't even use a calculator properly.
ReplyDeleteKinda like Calvin Coolidge, "When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results".
If I had to guess, I'd also put late marriage on the endangered list. I married at 37 myself, so I'm not judging, here.
ReplyDelete"I married late and don't have kids. So I'm not judging elite people who married late and don't have kids. I am judging people who have kids who don't get married and have kids early. You know, poor people."
The yawning chasm between "the person McMegan thinks she is" and "the person McMegan actually is" is the source of almost of the amusement to be found in her writing.
ReplyDeleteYou know when that whole tsing loh thing came up I despised her but reading the linked article I have a sneaking sympathy for her and the other women she describes. I agree, having just spent a weekend in NY being romantic with my spouse, that creating spaces for adult relationships and lifelong romance can become work like and that we just don't have any kind of history of women having midlife crises and running off to join the circus--the only way to escape a bargain grown old and cold is to break it, smash, with an affair.
ReplyDeleteA women's group I belonged to online prior to 9/11, when I got forced out for being too anti war and on the left, went through a phase when all the women--working mothers to the core--were obsessessed with fight club. They were massively hemmed in emotionally by taking on both the working role and the homemaker/mommy role and dreaming of infidelity was too threatening to their marriages so they dreamed of mayhem.
Oh yeah, she's the worst. If it weren't galling enough that she is a paid propagandist with no principles, the fact that she isn't very bright and yet has a giant megaphone and a huge paycheck is maddening.
ReplyDeleteOf course your observation about marriage historically not being between a man and a woman is correct, and while she may be ignorant of history if Megan has spent any time on Facebook (and given her vanity I'm sure she has) I'm sure she's seen one of the many charts circulating that show marriage at times being between multiple partners and concubines and slaves and donkeys and what have you which put the lie to this.
But since she has no real case she needs to lie about it, and she needs to add "...for some reason" because if the reason for heterosexual marriage being necessary to the very survival of society is mysterious and unidentifiable, then we can never understand it and better not mess with it lest the gods be angered and we call upon ourselves our own destruction. So no gay marriage for you!
Exactly. Ask David Vitter what he thinks of the Spitzer imbroglio.
ReplyDeleteLatest polling shows Sanford losing, in a solid red district, to his Democratic opponent (who is Stephen Colbert's sister). We need a new word for this phenomenon: I propose 'mourdocked', as in "Wow! Looks like Mark Sanford's going to mourdock the SC 1st!"
ReplyDeleteToo bad Mencken lived too early to include "crammed down their throats" in there.
ReplyDeleteCan I be on top? I'm delicate.
ReplyDeleteI want to pay tribute to this comment by dancing robotically with a flowerpot on my head.
ReplyDeleteThey used to call it "the kissing disease," too. Hmmm ...
ReplyDeleteThey were always fucking like bunnies, even in the Victorian days. Nowadays they use condoms and other pregnancy & disease avoidance- the smart ones, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI also think that maybe Prudehammer would be a good name for a German Superhero whose superpower was throwing shawls and sheets over embarrassing moments.
ReplyDeleteDon't Liberals in general have more stable marriages? Possibly because we don't think wedding vows are "sacred" and religious, enforced by a vengeful god? So, if my hubby told me he was once Tempted by the Fruit Of Another on one of his many business trips, my reply was "Use a CONDOM!" and a warning about expensive paternity suits, or being asked for an organ donation 20 years from now.
ReplyDeleteI don't think she's intelligent enough to NOT believe it. In fact she not only believes this drivel, she thinks her observations are Profound.
ReplyDeleteI know, right? I'm actually married, and I actually procreated, but now that that's done its not really the entire work of my life orof my marriage. Know why? Because I'm not a motherfuckin' lower life form that buds and dies off after reproducing.
ReplyDeleteDr. Who has better taste, frankly.
ReplyDeleteAsk David Vitter what he thinks of the Spitzer imbroglio.
ReplyDeleteRather not, thank you.
Yeah, I think N Dak is actually going to work that into their state motto.
ReplyDelete"Kerry" is a couple of letters shy of "IOKIYAR" obviously.
ReplyDeleteLord, I am so tired...
ReplyDeleteShe'd have to have a rope with one end tied to her and other to the inside of the TARDIS so that he wouldn't lose her.
ReplyDeleteWonder what conservatives would make of me: my wife have been married for 12 years and we just had our first child. I'm 35, my wife is 39. We are not rich, and waited years to start a family. But we're straight and support gay marriage. And I'm a stay at home dad! Oh, the contradictions!
ReplyDeleteOh, yes - she does. And she does on DC buses what Tom Friedman only dares do in cabs.
ReplyDeleteWait, is she really saying "Now that lesbians can get married there won't be any good girl-on-girl porn! Suck it, Libtards!"
ReplyDeleteShe might be saying that, but, honestly, there's no way to tell from what's she written--it's that confused.
ReplyDeleteIt's McArdle at her most typical.
"i only take the best" - 9th doctor, series 1, "the long game."
ReplyDeleteSince this comment thread has led to so many wonderful phrasings, like weaponized sour grapes, I feel I must doff my hat to Wonkette for "McAdderall."
ReplyDeleteI had mono 2 years ago at the ripe old age of 47, which first manifested in a 5-day case of the hives (a reaction to amoxicillan I was taking for a tooth abcess).
ReplyDeleteIt sucked harder than anything. I spent a month sleeping on average 16 - 18 hours per day, then another month where I was able to work up to a half day each day, then when I finally got better...it rebounded on me about 3 months later. Not as virulently, but enough to make me drag ass for another few weeks.
This past week I had the first respiratory infection I've had in about 5 years, and it knocked me on my ass. Another week of doing little more than sleeping. From what I understand, that's not unusual for someone who had the good fortune to contract mono embarrassingly late in life - for several years, it can come back on you whenever you come down with any other illness. I wouldn't wish that shit on anyone.
Well, except maybe for McArdle. If she spent more time sleeping, she'd spend less time blogging, even if only for a few months. I'll take what I can get.
Yeah, when I was in high school, there was an alarming outbreak (aka a "thing") of deviated septums (septi?), resulting in abbreviated post-surgical noses. The malady seemed to peak during the summer, and when school started, a lot of kids were casting smaller shadows. It was startling, but way better than mono. Also, it surely must have enhanced one's marriageability, so that must be good, yes? All I know is that my deviated septum was judged to be sub-clinical and was left untreated. I have never married, either. Everything happens for a reason, right?
ReplyDeleteHow i wish Altmouse would come back out of retirement and write this column for fantasy Megan. She could explain to us all how no one has ever had a baby before or, if they did, they were doing it wrong.
ReplyDeleteOh, now I get it.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was Yogi Berra.
ReplyDeleteLeland Stanford was a railroad tycoon, for fuck's sake.
ReplyDeleteSee? I defy someone with a computer science degree to come up with all of that.
ReplyDeletemen have married posthumous dead people
It could have been worse. They could have married posthumous living people. Though come to think of it, I wonder how things turned out for Lazarus.
Yeah, even the ditzy Jo Grant later became an environmental and political activist. And her grasp of economics still greatly exceeded McMegan's.
ReplyDeleteNot only does she apparently take seriously the propaganda that liberals are degenerates who fuck like animals
ReplyDeleteI think, like most conservatives, McMegan got all her knowledge of liberal sex habits from the Pansy Division song "Bunnies"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NafUYrPJK-U
also more common in the 1950s were falls from horses while out riding by one's self. In Wyoming, at least according to one of my co-workers
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that just in the last decade, Stanford-connected people and ventures have created vastly more shareholder value (spit) than Larry Kudlow has in his entire career.
ReplyDeleteI bet most students at Stanford, regardless of major, probably hope they'll luck out and have a friend who starts the next Facebook, and they'll be an early hire and get rich. The Steve Ballmer to a Bill Gates.
There's probably a faction who are disgusted by such activity, but they're probably carrying Zizek books around campus.
I suspect Stanford canceled the capitalism class because they realized the capitalism was doing just fine on campus, and didn't need a class teaching Ayn Rand.
Hell, rather than deprogramming capitalism-hating hippie children and socialists, it was probably attracting mostly true believers, for whom it was an easy A, and just reinforced their pre-existing ideologies.
I can give you the address of a good taxidermist.
ReplyDeleteSee? I defy someone with a computer science degree to come up with all of that.
ReplyDeleteHARUMPH.
Grape-shot is better than ear-shot.
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Yeah, legalize the reefer. Certainly no one boozes it up any more now that Prohibition's over.
ReplyDeleteFrom another blog: "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught".
ReplyDelete...in the last decade, Stanford-connected people
ReplyDeleteand ventures have created vastly more shareholder value (spit) than
Larry Kudlow has in his entire career.</i?
Actually, more likely in just the last ten minutes.
I used to say that Kaus was too clever by half. With McArdle its too clever by 97% but that just doesn't have the same zing.
ReplyDeleteHaysoos Krispies, the woman was 38 herself when SHE finally married (to a man almost a decade her junior). That whole bit about "we shouldn't make the unmarried feel bad about their failure" has a little shiver of the personal in it.
ReplyDeleteNow that she has Suderman (poor man) she can afford to contemplate the spinster failure that she will now never be accused of being.
I wonder how she will justify the eventual divorce?
He probably saw her as a gravy train, or at least Security if "Reason" went belly up.
ReplyDeleteI didn't get involved in a long term relationship until I was twenty-four, but it also didn't negatively impact my earnings (they were pretty poor as is!) because I continued school and work even with a relationship.
ReplyDeleteMarriage seems to exclude these things, but there's no reason it has to.
I defy a cultural anthropologist to build an internet commenting system that lets people instantly share insights like that with people all over the world. Oh wait, maybe that explains Blogger/Blogspot/JSKit/HaloScan/Disqus...
ReplyDelete"And abrupt visits to "relatives" that lasted for exactly six months."
ReplyDeleteWas it 'Rheumatic Fever' or 'Romantic Fever'.
"But McArdle can't be as cynical as she acts. She got married in
ReplyDeleteher late 30's, which suggests that she married out of love rather than
necessity or pressure. And why is that a bad thing, again?"
It's a bad thing in that she's telling everybody else to do exactly what she didn't. And she *is* as cynical as she acts.
"When I broke the news to my wife that we had to divorce because marriage
ReplyDeleteis for procreation only, she said "you're not getting off that easy"."
And she called the vet who specializes in bulls that won't...............
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